This paper discusses in detail the ethical issues in the contemporary professional sports and shows how these issues are addressed in the European Union countries and in the United States. From the ethical perspective it was decided that it is disputable to finance companies in competitive sports from a public purse (central and local government purse), to sponsor football clubs by bookmaking companies, to pay compensations (financial equivalents) for the change of membership in clubs by the players (the so called (...) transfers). It was noticed that in the era of deepening sports commercialisation and application of ambush marketing strategies a real problem has become how to protect the interests of sport fans. It was decided that reaching of a certain scale of business operations (e.g. a certain threshold of revenues or profits) by monopolistic sports organisations should be paralleled by their loss of privileged status and/or change of their organisational and legal status (change from voluntary, non-profit organisations into companies operating under commercial law). (shrink)

The players’ agent is a middleman who, on the strength of an agent contract and with pay, becomes obliged to act as a go-between in concluding contracts between players and clubs or transfer contracts between clubs. According to data of the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA), at the end of March 2011 there were 5794 licensed agents of football players in 219 national federations. According to the FIFA’s regulations, players, as well as clubs, have right to engage licensed agents (...) in connection with negotiationg or renegotiationg of a player’s employment contract or a player’s transfer. Players and clubs are forbidden using services of unlicensed agents. The FIFA’s Regulations on Players’ Agents – and analogous regulations of the Polish Union of Football – burden the agent with many obligations. Moreover, definite obligations are imposed on clubs and players. Additional regulations introduce a code of players’ agents professional conduct. The player’s agent – as well as the player, the club and the union – can be imposed with sanctions for breaking the abovementioned rules. In milieus connected with Polish football there is a quite common opinion that, in spite of severe sanctions provided by regulations, obligations and rules of professional conduct are often broken in activities of players’ agents. However it is an opinion based on rumours and suppositions, which is not confirmed by decisions of the Department of Discipline of the Polish Union of Football concerning infliction of punishment. (shrink)

When power is exercised in the enterprise some ethical issues might occur with business ownership, personnel policy, working conditions etc. These issues and ways of addressing them were depicted and interpreted from the perspective of the Church’s social teachings included in papal encyclicals, viz.: Rerum novarum, Laborem exercens, Centesimus Annus. In the Church’s social teachings a number of principles were noticed that are favourable for the ethical corporate management including the principle of the primacy of work over capital, right to (...) private ownership, right to establish professional associations, right to fair pay, right to fulfil religious obligations and having rest during holidays, a duty to support the weak and the needy (solidarity principle). The analysis of the social content of papal encyclicals showed two faces of power. On the one hand it is necessary and has positive effects (introduction of corporate governance, taking right decisions, prevention of theft and assets devastation etc.); on the other hand improper power exercise may lead to a number of undesirable effects (corruption, worker discrimination, thriftlessness etc.) The paper identifies also sources, forms and power exercising planes in the enterprise. (shrink)

This paper focuses on some ethical issues of companies operating in the field of competitive sports including in particular: limited liability vis-à-vis creditors of the companies that discontinued their activities, but were not subject to liquidation, nor bankruptcy petition has been filed; hampered recognisability of individual companies due to frequent changing of their names and names of teams participating in the tournaments; legal and financial status, rights and duties of contestants of these companies are underdefined; company identity is violated due (...) to the pursuing of merger and acquisition strategy. It was decided that the above issues exemplify broader problems between labour and capital in the contemporary enterprise. Addressing of the above issues is a tough and complicated process, and sometimes simply impossible in the situation where sports have been recognised as equal sphere of business activities and where basic rules of market economy are respected also with reference to this sphere of life. (shrink)

In many computer applications we face the following situation: we are given set of objects which are characterized by means of some features like: temperature, height, weight etc., and we want to dene in terms of those features some concepts. For example we have a data le concerning patients suering from a certain disease. State of each patient is characterized by some symptoms like, for example: blood pressure, temperature etc. The question arises whether wa are able to dene this disease (...) in terms of avail- able symptoms. Notice that we identify here concept of a specic disease with a set of patients suering from this disease. Hence the denition of a disease depends upon specic example of a disease under consideration. This approach refers to inductive reasoning, when a concept is built upon the basis of a nite number of examples of this concept. More detailed discussion of problems considered here one { can nd in Pawlak , Pawlak and Or lowska and Pawlak. (shrink)